The long slog to dredge the Sabine-Neches Ship Channel has fresh replacement in Vernon Pierce.

Pierce, customer service vice president for Entergy Texas, was appointed by Jefferson County Commissioners Court this week to a board vacancy made when Jim Rich, recently retired as the Greater Beaumont Chamber of Commerce president, moved out of the county.

In a prepared statement, Pierce said local industry depends on the waterway.

"I see my role as helping to support this," he said.

The effort to deepen the channel began in 1999 when a decade-long study resulted in an approval by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and ultimately by Congress.

The next step is getting the project onto the president's budget to begin paying for the $1.1 billion deepening.

The point is to deepen the waterway to 48 feet from its current authorized depth of 40 feet to accommodate larger shipping and cargoes. The deeper channel would be dredged from the Port of Beaumont to the outer buoys of the Sabine-Neches channel offshore from Sabine Pass.